Your brother Minnegan,

Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground.

Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green,

Told me to find you, even if the rain,

And tell you he was drowned.

The wreck of someone's Ford:

I was afraid to come and wake you drunk:

You told me once the waking up was hard,

The daylight beating at you like a board.

Blood in my stomach sank.

Along the river-side

Drinking and singing, clattering about.

You might have thrown a rock at me and cried

I was to blame, I let him fall in the road

And pitch down on his side.

For coming up this far,

Leaving the note, and running as I came.

I'll go and tell my father where you are.

You'd better go find Minnegan before

Policemen hear and come.

You old son of a bitch.

You better hurry down to Minnegan;

He's drunk or dying now, I don't know which,

Rolled in the roots and garbage like a fish,

The poor old man.

What's the use?

I think of you,

Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,

When you were being towed up the rapids

Toward some political job or other

In the city of Chungshou.

You made it, I guess,

By dark.

And the tall rocks of Minneapolis

Build me my own black twilight

Of bamboo ropes and waters.

Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved?

Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness

Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing

But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.

Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains?

Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope

For a thousand years?

Had quick eyes.

They stared about wildly,

When the moon went dark.

The new moon falls into the freight yards

Of cities in the south,

But the loss of the moon to the dark hands of Chicago

Does not matter to the deer

In this northern field.

There, in the trees?

I can hear rabbits and mourning dovees whispering together

In the dark grass, there

Under the trees.

As I strolled alone, years ago, down along

The Ohio shore.

I hid in the hobo jungle weeds

Upstream from the sewer main,

Pondering, gazing.

At Twenty-third and Water Streets

By the vinegar works,

The doors open in early evening.

Swinging their purses, the women

Poured down the long street to the river

And into the river.

They could drown every evening.

What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,

Drying their wings?

Has only two shores:

The one in hell, the other

In Bridgeport, Ohio.

To find beyond death

Bridgeport, Ohio.

Pure delicate body,

You stand without trembling.

Little mist of falllen starlight,

Perfect, beyond my reach,

How I envy you,

For if you could only listen,

I would tell you something,

Something human.

Appeared to me once

In the unendurable snow.

He had a singe of white

Beard on his face.

He paused on a street in Minneapolis

And stroked my face.

I'll pay you anything.

We slunk away,

Each in his own way dodging

The cruel darts of the cold.

How could you possibly

Worry or bother or care

About the ashamed, hopeless

Old man? He was so near death

He was willing to take

Any love he could get,

Even at the risk

Of some mocking policeman

Or some cute young wiseacre

Smashing his dentures,

Perhaps leading him on

To a dark place and there

Kicking him in his dead groin

Just for the fun of it.

By anything but your beautiful natural blossoms

And dew, the dark

Blood in my body drags me

Down with my brother.

hopelessness, he stays alive in every shady place, starving along the

Mediterranean: angry to see the glittering sea-pale boulder alive

with lizards green as Judas leaves. Winter is hanging on. He still

believes. He tries to catch a lizard by the shoulder. One olive tree

below Grottaglie welcomes the winter into noontime shade, and

talks as softly as Pythagoras. Be still, be patient, I can hear him say,

cradling in his arms the wounded head, letting the sunlight touch

the savage face.

A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out

To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.

But far up the mountain, behind the town,

We too were swept out, out by the wind,

Alone with the Tuscan grass.

For days, and everything now was graying gold

With dust, everything we saw, even

Some small children scampering along a road,

Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.

And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,

Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging

And scattering shadows among shells and wings.

And then she stepped into the center of air

Slender and fastidious, the golden hair

Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,

While ruins crumbled on every side of her.

Free of the dust, as though a moment before

She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.

Away in her own good time.

Have searched all over Tuscany and never found

What I found there, the heart of the light

Itself shelled and leaved, balancing

On filaments themselves falling. The secret

Of this journey is to let the wind

Blow its dust all over your body,

To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly

All the way through your ruins, and not to lose

Any sleep over the dead, who surely

Will bury their own, don't worry.

Near the South Dakota border,

The moon is out hunting, everywhere,

Delivering fire,

And walking down hallways

Of a diamond.

It ights on the ruins

Of a white city:

Frost, frost.

Who lived there?

And dark faces.

Of it, and I go on

Living, alone, alone,

Past the charred silos, past the hidden graves

Of Chippewas and Norwegians.

Moon spills the inhuman fire

Of jewels

Into my hands.

Darkens,

And I am lost in the beautiful white ruins

Of America.